


The Babysitter

by SmoothieM



Category: Skulduggery Pleasant - Derek Landy
Genre: Some Fluff, little Valkyrie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-09-13 03:44:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16885008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SmoothieM/pseuds/SmoothieM
Summary: Set after SP10!Story of Skulduggery meeting Valkyrie when she was only a baby :)





	The Babysitter

“Thank you so much for babysitting, Gordon!” Melissa said with a big smile on her face as she handed Stephanie over to her brother-in-law.   
“She is a good kid, really adorable. Except that she drives us crazy. But that is what kids do, don’t they? I tried to reason with her, explaining that we need our sleep and all, but she doesn’t seem to understand”, Desmond explained further.  
“She is fifteen months old, Des. Fifteen-month-old babies don’t tend to reason with you”  
“But she is our daughter after all! She is special! Look at her eyes, I assure you, she understands everything we say. Isn’t that so, Steph?”  
The baby girl in Gordon arms giggled and he couldn’t help but smile. God, she was too cute to be true! It was moments like these when his heart broke over the thought that this may have been his daughter if things had worked out with Melissa.  
“Gordon, she should be sleeping most of the time, except for when she’s hungry. I know she looks small, but don’t underestimate how much this little one can eat. There are fresh diapers in the bag and if anything goes wrong, just call us and we’ll be here as soon as we can!”  
“I got it, Melissa. Really. Look at her, she is such an angel! I’m sure we will get along just fine”, Gordon assured her calmly.   
“Okay, okay. Good. Thank you. Oh, and Gordon - no stories about monsters. I don’t want her to get nightmares!”  
The author frowned. “Didn’t you just say she is too young to understand?”  
“Yes, but… you never know, right?”  
“I have everything under control. You two go enjoy yourself”   
He kissed her gently on the cheek and shook his brother’s hand before closing the door in front of them. Then he grinned down to the baby in his arms. Her still quite short hair was already deep black, and her dark brown eyes reminded him of a puppy. He loved dogs.   
“You and I are going to have a lot of fun!”  
She giggled adorably and Gordon felt his heart melt. He carried her to his study and showed her all the books he had collected.  
“This, my dear, is my private collection. Everything in here is worth a good fortune, yet nothing is as precious as you are”  
He let her down gently and Stephanie started to run around through the room, touching the books and marvelling at the height of the shelf. She ran and occasionally pulled a book at, frantically flipped pages, frowned when she noticed that there were no pictures in them, and then ran to the next one, creating a minor mess.  
“Alright, maybe you’re a bit too young for books…”, Gordon said decidedly to himself and went to find something else she could play with. She ran after him excitedly, and as he noticed that he didn’t exactly have a lot of kid friendly things around, she was not behind him anymore.  
“Um, Stephanie? Steph?” He didn’t exactly expect an answer, yet heard giggling from the bathroom and found the toddler in his laundry basket.  
“What are you doing, hm? Making the laundry?” She didn’t react, instead pulled out a pair of worn socks and spun them around in the air. It didn’t take too long until she smelled them though, screwed up her nose and said “Yuck”, before throwing them out into the bathtub. Gordon laughed and went to pick them up.  
“You don’t really like my socks, do you?” Stephanie ignored him, instead took one of his t-shirts. Her eyes widened as she saw how big it was compared to herself. Clumsily she got out of the basket, which she turned over in the process, held the shirt behind her and started to swing it around, looking as if she were dancing.   
“Oh, so you like dancing, huh? Follow along, Stephanie!” He went to turn the stereo on, having her run behind him, the shirt flying behind her like a cape. As soon as the music played, her face lightened up and she moved awkwardly to the beat of the music, wrapping the shirt around herself, causing her uncle to laugh out loud. He got down to his knees and took her little hands into his, then made different movements with his arms, gently pulling her around and spinning her. She laughed delightful. A few songs in, the doorbell rang.   
“Who may that be?” he asked Stephanie, picked her up and went to open the door. Skulduggery Pleasant stood there in an exquisite three-piece suit and hat, with the scarf he used as disguise casually hanging down at his skull, looking at him at first, then noticing the baby in his arms.  
“Please tell me you didn’t kidnap her”, the velvet voice said jokingly.  
“No, but I may just keep her. Skulduggery, this is my niece, Stephanie”  
“Stephanie, what an honour to meet you”   
The skeleton extended his gloved hand towards her and she giggled when she laid her tiny hand into his.   
“My name is Skulduggery. Can you say it? It’s a big word”  
“Skaldugery!” she exclaimed exited, causing him to tilt his head smilingly and chuckle “Fair enough”  
“Why don’t you come in?”, Gordon asked, politely opening the door to let his friend enter.  
“Thanks. I was around and thought I may just give you some inspiration for a book of yours.”  
“Is that so?”  
“I just talked to a friend of mine, Saracen Rue, I am sure you heard of him”  
“I heard about every Dead Men story there is”  
“Perfect. Anyway, he told me about an epic battle with a certain Tanith Low and some other things she did that I thought may just be quite interesting for you to hear”  
“Brilliant! Just brilliant! Except that…” he looked at Stephanie in his arms, “I may have promised her parents to not tell her any monster stories”  
“She is looking at a living skeleton as we speak”  
“Ah, but you’re not a monster. Monsters look way scarier than you do.”  
“Thanks?”  
“Well, maybe we can keep her distracted for long enough so she won’t hear all the bloody details… Stephanie, do you like drawing?”  
The little girl clapped her hands: “Yes!”  
“Very well then… Mind holding her for just a bit?” Before Skulduggery could answer, Gordon already placed Stephanie into his arms and disappeared into his study.  
“Well, hello there”, Skulduggery said softly.  
“Hello”, she answered, grinningly.  
“You are not afraid of me, are you?” She laughed and shook her head no, then grabbed the side of his hat and pulled on it.  
“You like my head, don’t you? Well, I’m afraid it may just be a tad too big for you, don’t you say?” He gently placed it onto her head, covering almost all her face, before lifting it up and adjusting it again on his own head. She looked a bit confused at first, before laughing again right into his face. If he had a face, he would smile back, but she didn’t seem to mind that he couldn’t. Instead, she touched his cheek bone with her hand, examined how it felt compared to her own skin. Her face showed pure fascination.  
“I see you two get along just fine” Gordon said once he re-entered the room.  
“You have an adorable niece indeed. She has smart eyes too.”  
“She surely is something special. She is an Edgley after all.”  
“Stephanie, do you want to see something amazing?”  
She nodded her head a few times, her face shining. Skulduggery used is free hand and snapped to summon a flame, then let it dance around his hands. The toddler’s mouth was wide open as she said “Wooooow”. Once the flame was gone, she demanded to see it again, and again, and again, in never ending astonishment.   
“Okay, enough of that” Gordon said and Skulduggery was sure he detected a hint of jealousy in his voice as he took his niece back and placed her on the ground, equipped with some crayons and some paper. “Why don’t you draw something nice?”   
She looked a bit disappointed at Skulduggery, but just a moment later started to draw on the paper while the two men sat down close enough to be watching her, yet far away enough to be out of her hearing range, and Skulduggery told him all about the mysterious Tanith Low and the wonders she committed. Gordon was more than just impressed, already forming ideas and formulation in his mind how to include all of this is his next book. They talked for quite some time, before Stephanie walked up to them with a finished masterpiece in her hand. She handed it Skulduggery full of excitement who felt a warm fuzzy feeling in his chest develop as he saw that she drew something that without a doubt resembled a skeleton in a suit, his hand on fire. Next to it, there was a man, most likely Gordon, and in the middle, there was a little person with black hair and a hat who covered half of it. He showed it to his friend, whose eye began to sparkle and water up a bit.  
“This is very beautiful, Stephanie. Thank you”, Skulduggery said and picked her up a she reached with his arms towards him.  
“I think you made yourself a new friend right there”, Gordon mumbled.  
“Quite so. Well, why don’t you go take some notes for your book while I take care of her?”  
“Are you sure?”  
“Absolutely. Look at her, she is adorable”  
“Well, if you do want to make yourself useful, why don’t you feed her?”  
“What do I know about food?”  
“Just make sure she doesn’t choke on it”  
“Well, that sounds easy enough. Are you hungry, little one?”  
“Yes yes yes!” she proclaimed. He lifted Stephanie into his arms, carried her to the kitchen and looked around at what to prepare for her.  
“So, uh, what do you like?”  
“Spaghetti!”  
“Really?”  
“Pweeaassseee” she looked at her with her big, dark eyes and the next thing he knew is how he cooked whole package of spaghetti for her. Once done, he took the greatest care to cut them in tiny piece to make absolutely sure she would choke on them, then laid a kitchen cloth carefully over his suit to make sure she wouldn’t spill on it - it was an exquisite Ghastly Bespoke after all - then placed her into lap and fed her gently, until she yawned and leaned against his chest, her arms hugging his tie.  
“Tired, aren’t you?” Weak nodding.  
“Do you want me to sing you to sleep?” Nodding again, and so he gently began humming Mrs Jones while wrecking her back and forth in his arms. He stayed for two more hours, never letting her out of his arms. He forgot what is was like to have a baby, but being here now, with her, everything seemed to make sense again. Only when the sanctuary called him and demanded his immediate present, he reluctantly left her with Gordon again before whispering “We will see each other again, Stephanie”. Of course she didn’t hear him in her sleep, but for the rest of the night, the fuzzy feeling stayed. Before he left the mansion, Gordon handed him the picture she drew.   
“Take it. Her parents would just question why, oh why she would draw a skeleton with a fire hand.”  
“Thank you, Gordon. I’ll see you soon” With that, he wrapped his scarf around his head and walked back to his black Bentley. 

** 23 years later **

Valkyrie and Skulduggery sat on the Sofa at Skulduggery’s house, she was gently leaning on him, her hand on his chest, her head resting at the space where his neck would be if he had skin. She was glad to have her friend back, glad that he didn’t want to kill her anymore.   
“Is it true what you said?”, she asked after a while, stopping the silence.  
“I say a lot of wonderful things, Valkyrie”  
“Did you really meet me when I was a baby?”  
He laughed amused. “Oh, yes. You used to be so precious”  
“I still am precious!”  
“In a different way, yes”  
“So you’ve basically known me all my life…”  
“And you have adored me all your life”  
“Of course you would say that”  
“I can prove it too”  
Skulduggery gently pushed her from him and got up, disappearing in upstairs. Valkyrie frowned. What kind of proof was he talking about?  
He came back mere minutes later, holding a piece of paper in his hands and showed it to her.   
“You drew this for me that night you were at Gordon’s”  
“I did?” She gently took it, looked at the badly drawn skeleton with the fire hand, and a man that very well could have been Gordon. And then there was a mini version of her, wearing a hat that reminded her too much of a certain one she knew.  
“Looks like I adored your hat more”   
“You did like it a lot”  
“And you kept this? It was ages ago, why would you do that?”  
“Naturally I did, this may have been the cutest thing you ever done”  
She smiled, tears filling her eyes.  
“That means a lot, Skulduggery. It really does”  
“I always knew you were special and that we would meet again. Little did I know that it took eleven years for that or what else would happen, but here we are.”  
“And I wouldn’t want to have it any other way.” Skulduggery tilted his head and she knew he was smiling.   
“I’m glad you say that. So, you’re with me again? Until the end?”  
“Until the end.”


End file.
